Elliott Weiss remembers when he first met Julia Gasow. It was 1967, and he was handler Ted Young, Jr.’s apprentice. Gasow, known as “Julie” to her friends, had been breeding her Salilyn English Springer Spaniels for three decades.
This issue of The Canine Chronicle celebrates the Sporting Group, an impressive collection of breeds developed to do a specific job over a specific terrain. Looking at the array of sporting breeds today, we can’t help but be amazed by the courage, perseverance, and creative eye of the breed’s founders.
We live in challenging times. Our best efforts are needed to rise to this challenge, navigate our way through the maze, and successfully find the way out. Judges face these dilemmas in ways as individual as they are themselves. Read these thoughtful responses. Try to walk in their shoes. Could you?
In 1935 he became involved with bringing in a fairly new breed just gaining recognition by fanciers, the Norwich Terrier. Looking back, in 1962 he wrote that in the fall of 1935 while in England he received a letter commissioning him to purchase a Norwich Terrier in whelp.
I recently inherited hundreds of classic and antique dog books – from breed books to instructional manuals and illustrated references.
Working breeds come into this deal facing very long odds. Really, the bar is set impossibly high before they lift a paw. Here’s a perfect example, “The Saint Bernard shares with the Newfoundland the honor of being the only two breeds of dogs whose special mission and characteristics are the saving of life, in contradiction to all other breeds which more or less, lie in the direction of destruction.” What!! In other words, if you enter life in this category don’t even think about loafing around the house doing dog stuff. That belief was so totally ingrained in purebred lore that even a hard bitten veteran of the sport like Theo Marples couldn’t resist the ideological claptrap pervading the histories of these breeds.
274 – August, 2013 (click here for full digital article) By Nikki Riggsbee The Border Terrier experts emphasized time and again that this breed is a working terrier, and that the important characteristics were those that support that activity. Some experts expressed doubts that this survey could identify the important features of Border Terriers, that […]
While we are all patiently and not-so-patiently waiting for dog shows to return, it’s no surprise that ideas for virtual dog shows are the talk of the town. To some, virtual shows are an anathema. To others, they offer short-term relief from the stoppage of in-person dog shows. There is, however, another way to look at virtual shows: with a long-term approach that could energize the sport and make in-person dog shows better than ever.
A typical day of a seasoned dog show exhibitor is centered around many self-serving activities, such as finding the best parking spot for yourself, finding the premier grooming set up for yourself and completing all necessary steps to present you and your dog in the most meticulous nature in the ring. All of these serve as catalysts to assure that you are presenting yourself and your dog to maximum potential.
